Ed Cicale did a site visit with Brady Collins at The University of Cincinnati Football Team
Summer Training programBody Fat Percentage

By: Daniel Green

They used to call it definition; today we use a different term, body fat
percentage. There is an undeniable movement towards ultimate definition
these days, at least around show time. After a contest, things change.
Most bodybuilders gain 10 pounds after a contest. Most others gain20,
30, or even 40. Usually, this does not manifest itself as roll of fat,
but as increased overall size and so-called thicker skin. It would be
fair to say that you do yourself no good by gaining more than 10 pounds
after a show, and if you start to get rolls of fat, you will be in
trouble.When you reduce your fat percentage to less than 7
percent, your body takes on a whole new appearance. Not only do veins
show up in minute detail, but cross-striations of the muscles become
apparent, so you'll look like an anatomy chart, a picture of muscles
with the skin stripped away. That's a condition which has led to a good
deal of controversy. With today’s champions, unlike those of yesteryear,
the body fat percentage often fluctuates according to the stage of
their training. It is not uncommon for a competitive bodybuilder to cut
their body fat by two thirds before a contest.Incidentally,
some of the ancient Grecian statues that presumably represented the
Greek ideal of male perfection have also been scrutinized with regard to
their body fat. The famous Farnese Hercules is estimated to have 11.96
percent, the Apollo Belvedere, 11.76, and Myron’s Discobolus 12.06. If
these statues were real men, they would probably not do well in the
Olympic contest, where the top six men have averaged a body fat count of
fewer than 5 percent.

Why does current fashion seem to be
pushing the bodybuilding ideal towards being almost fat-free? One reason
is that it enables us to see muscles that we never knew we had. Few
physique champions of the distant past could show shapely, delineated
serratus muscles and incredibly separate thigh muscles. Today it would
be very difficult to win any contest unless all your muscles are diamond
sharp. That includes the muscles of the upper thigh and lowers back,
two areas from which it is difficult to eliminate all fat. Today, fat
free bodies are a must. Maybe styles will once again return to the 11
percentile ideal. Who knows, for the moment, however, low fat and
cross-striations are the order of the day. So how do
bodybuilders bring their fat down to a very low percentage? One could
give an oversimplified answer: they eat less. True enough, but it goes
deeper than that! Most successful body men eat fairly normally when they
are not preparing for a contest. That is not to say they eat junk
foods. A few do. Most of them don't, so it is advisable for the food you
eat to be as near to its natural state as possible. Foods with natural
fibre keep you leaner and fitter than dense calorie foods. Have
whole-grain bread, cereals, fruit, vegetables, fish, cheese, organic and
white meats, and milk. Stay away from the processed, chemically
treated, artificially flavored, brilliantly coloured garbage that your
local supermarket offers as food.Weight training may be
unparalleled in its potential for building up the skeletal muscles of
body, but is not a particularly good fat burning activity. Aerobic
exercise should be included in the program of any bodybuilder interested
in staying lean. Typical exercises such as stationary bike riding, road
cycling, slow jogging, swimming, and walking, burns calories through
prolonged, low intensity effort. Weight training is not aerobic but
anaerobic exercise, high-intensity effort which does not result in a
steady need for oxygen and considerably stepped-up heart rate.Aerobic exercise stimulates the production of enzymes that convert fat
to energy. The more fat-burning enzymes you have, the better you can use
up or burn excess flab. Not only does aerobic activity burn calories
better than anything else, it also increases the body's capacity for
burning fat. A long-distance or marathon runner is a veritable
fat-burning machine. The reason this is a veritable fat-burning machine.
The reason this is so is that the aerobic activity keeps the
heart-pulse rate below 80 percent of your maximum. To estimate your
maximum heart rate, subtract your age from 220.Unlike weight
training, which can temporarily boost your heart rate to near maximum,
walking keeps your heart rate well under 80 percent of your maximum.
Needless to say, aerobic exercise should be limited if you are urgently
trying to gain weight, and even during regular maintenance training you
should not overdo this form of exercise, since it can detract from your
bodybuilding gains. Some degree of common sense has to be used so as to
balance muscular development with aerobic fitness. If you are fit and
well-muscled, you really have a double advantage, extra fat burring
enzymes to help you stay lean, and extra muscle mass.

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